Activists waited in line at Jacksonville City Hall Friday to argue for and against controversial legislation that would require demolition of most boarded-up houses lacking utilities.

Three hours of debate by residents and City Council members ended without a consensus, and highlighted divisions that could keep the legislation (2014-427) unsettled until it can be rewritten to win more support.

“It’s going to take a while, Ms. Lee. It’s not going to happen in a month or so,” Councilman Warren Jones told Denise Lee, who chairs a council committee on neighborhood blight. Lee had championed the bill as part of a set of steps to curb street-corner loitering and drug-dealing, whose effect Lee described as “human blight.”

Lee said it’s evident changes are needed in the bill, which applies to buildings boarded up for two years. But she insisted the aim was worthwhile.

“I am not going to fool you. We are going to get the legislation through, because it needs to be done,” she told a critic, Key Ehas, who touted steps other communities had taken to revitalize neighborhoods with little use of demolition.

Ehas told the committee that out of 949 properties demolished since 2006, 88 percent of the lots were still vacant and had generally lowered property values.

The criticism echoed warnings that the city’s Historic Preservation Commission delivered in an email.

“The proposed ordinance, rather than promoting an economic revitalization, would instead promote the bulldozing of buildings,” commission Chair Jennifer Mansfield wrote, adding: “The commission believes that rehabilitation is a better tool than demolition for the revitalization of neighborhoods.”

Mansfield said the bill “significantly threatens Jacksonville’s historic resources.” He noted that City Hall, the 1900s-vintage St. James Building that was a long-closed department store before the city bought it, would have been required to be demolished if the bill had been in effect 25 years ago.

But Lloyd Washington, a longtime neighborhood leader in Grand Park, told the committee he supports the bill as is. He said he shares some concerns about effects on historic buildings, but said people in areas terrorized by drug crime and violence need some relief, even if that means leveling vacant buildings used as drug dens.

A series of people who live or have businesses in neighborhoods targeted recently by the Sheriff’s Office Operation Ceasefire anti-crime push made similar arguments, while several people involved with preservation efforts in Springfield and Durkeeville expressed concerns about the bill.

“We are indeed talking about two different communities,” said Jones, who added the legislation will be talked through further in a subcommittee he chairs.